Striatech: Excellence in Optomotor Tracking

See the Video! The OptoDrum Experience explained

The Optomotor Reflex

All animals have reflexes that help to stabilize the image of the environment on their retinas. Such reflexes are triggered, for example, by translational movement of the environment. Look out of the window of a moving train, and your eyes will jump back and forth! This is the optokinetic reflex. Similarly, there will be compensatory head movements, caused by the optomotor reflex. Observing those reflexes is an important tool widely used in research to assess the visual abilities of animals. After all, one cannot ask a mouse whether or not it has seen a stimulus. But only a stimulus that is actually seen can trigger such reflexes. So far, it has been very tedious and time consuming to analyze the corresponding reflex-driven behavior of mice. Our OptoDrum system automates this task. It delivers quick and objective results about their visual abilities, such as contrast sensitivity and spatial acuity.

Automated Analysis - The Ultimate Optomotor Drum

The OptoDrum experience is fully automated. Place a mouse on the platform inside the arena, and the OptoDrum will present slowly rotating stripe patterns to the animal. Its behavior is monitored by a camera, and our software determines if the animal follows the stripe pattern with its head movement. The stripe pattern will be adjusted over time (made more difficult to be seen, e.g. by lowering the contrast), until the animal no longer shows the reflex-driven behavior. No training is necessary for the animal, and only very limited training is necessary for the user. The OptoDrum is incredibly easy to use, right out of the box.